2-DAY "OPEN FIELDS" CONFERENCE, 6 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS, 80 PRESENTATIONS, 3 EXHIBITIONS, PERFORMANCES, AND JUST 140 AVAILABLE SEATS
Moderator. Andrew Gryf PATERSON
Eva SJUVE. Creative process in augmented atmospheric environments and generative auditory systems
This paper examines the augmented environment and artistic applications of generative auditory systems. Generative auditory systems is in this research a mediator between the (un)natural environment, the machine, data ecology and the human. The (un)natural environment includes in this research the extracted data from atmospheric toxic substances to address issues and challenges of climate change. This paper is looking at the artistic uses of data, stable and unstable, and different aspects of applying this data for the creation of augmented environments. In this artistic research project, “Metopia”, in the context of urban sonic art, the aesthetics of generative systems and creativity are explored. Also, different aspects of augmentation in the context of data aesthetics, ranging from procedural systems to artificial (not-so) intelligent systems, are explored in this artistic research project.
Biography: Eva Sjuve is a media artist, composer and researcher. She creates interactive media technologies to reveal hidden structures in the intersection between data ecology and the physical world, addressing contemporary and environmental issues. Her work has been included in exhibits around the globe since the early 1980’s, including the Australian Center of Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; CAEIT Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, California Institute of the Arts, USA; The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, USA, and the City Exhibition Hall, Sydney. Her research has been presented at conferences, including the Internet of Things: The Philosophy 14, Hybrid City 13, MediaCity 10, Creativity & Cognition 09, ISEA 08/14/15/16, and NIME 08. She holds a Master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm and is conducting her research in creative arts at CeReNeM: Centre for Research in New Music, University of Huddersfield, UK. http://www.moolab.net
Jenny RODENHOUSE. The Enchanted Forest: Satellite Canopies and Digital Understories
From satellite sensors to virtual reality content, forests are being scanned, replicated, and rendered to resolve our current climate reality and to escape into a entirely different one. Evolving into a complex system of entangled networked devices, media, and data, forests now extend well beyond their physical, natural, and conceptual bounds—into outer space, into the living room, and into a multi-layered environment that blends the virtual and the real, the artificial and the natural, the local and the global.
I introduce “The Enchanted Forest”, a working process and short film that investigates new ecosystems emerging from the alignment of landscapes, aerial observation technologies, and VR culture. Using a forest located in Sottochiesa, Italy, I will present the project’s experiments in finding and making alignments—combining documentary research, interviews with an Agronomist, satellite locator applications, popular VR forest environments, and speculative simulations—to generate a place that is sited within multiple representations, geographies, and realities.
Using the forest and film as a test site, I explore the construction of a hyper-linked ecosystem that appears and disappears with the passing of the International Space Station, our new artificial satellite moon. The project imagines how our landscapes, seasons, and internal rhythms might be transformed by technological forces, representative of our growing faith in the multi-layered realm we inhabit—the planetary interface. Through this project, I propose the creation of new hybrid ecologies of interaction and practice within the post-digital, Anthropocene era.
Biography: Jenny Rodenhouse works within the fields of interaction design and art. Her work investigates the digitizing of natural environments, the merging of technology and the landscape, and the digital interface as humanity’s new natural habitat. Appropriating the ‘test site’ as a platform, she creates sites of experimentation to prototype alternates—the other possible realities and cultural choices we have as we develop our technological futures.
Jenny teaches at Art Center College of Design in Media Design Practices MFA program and the Interaction Design Department, recently leading the Graduate and Undergraduate Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Studios. She holds a Masters of Fine Art degree from Art Center College of Design and Bachelors of Industrial Design from Syracuse University.Jenny has been a Fellow at Nature, Art, & Habitat Residency, a Lead Designer at Microsoft Research, and a Postgraduate Research Fellow at Media Design Practices, ArtCenter College of Design. She has shown work at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, BODY and the Anthropocene, Architecture + Design Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Post-Internet Cities Conference (upcoming), The Graduate Center for Critical Studies, and KAM Workshops: Artificial Natures. Her work has been covered by The Guardian, Wired Magazine, Anti-Utopias, and Test Plots Magazine.
Website: www.jennyrodenhouse.com
Misha RABINOVICH. Shareable Biome
Misha Rabinovich’s current Shareable Biome project is rooted in a fascination with microbiome theory and Western culture’s recent adoption of the Fecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT) as a radically life-saving probiotic procedure. The rapidly increasing accessibility of this treatment is largely due to the work of the nonprofit stool bank OpenBiome. OpenBiome shared their data with the artists, which has been driving their artistic research, visualizations, and performances. Caitlin & Misha gave their latest expanded iteration of the lecture performance at Machine Project in Los Angeles earlier this year.
This lecture performance explores the radical probiotic procedure that magically transforms human feces into a medicinal fountain of youth. Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich provide an overview of FMT in pop culture (Holy Mountain, Pink Flamingos etc.) and introduce methods for cultivating a diverse microbiome including a group meditation.
Antibiotic overuse can create a dangerous, illness inducing monoculture. Human culture is also threatened by monoculture run astray, for example the manosphere, the alt-right, etc. The ecological need for a diverse microbiome is a fertile analogy for a multitude of cultural struggles in which sharing communities play a key role. Our human culture greatly impacts the health of our microbiome and the latest research shows that the bacteria in our guts strongly influence our thoughts and feelings. Could FMT also help people better understand each other and the value of diversity?
Biography: Misha Rabinovich work as artist and curator who create works which engage ideas and practices that involve sharing communities, livable ecologies, and the transmutation of waste. Among other things he create interactive games, installations, and happenings where audience participation is a key component of the work and its message. His DS Institute Sweat Battery actively creates/engages a sharing community through the collection of sweat from participants using their mobile sauna, presents an alternative ecology for energy production, and transforms sweat “waste” into power to charge cell phones and symbolize collective energy. His work has been exhibited in the US, Canada, and Europe at such venues as EFA Project Space (NYC), Flux Factory (NYC), the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival (NYC), Boston Cyberarts (Boston), the Torrance Art Museum in (LA), the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), SIGGRAPH (LA), Artspace (New Haven, CT), High Desert Test Sites HQ (Joshua Tree), Prague Biennale (Czech Republic), Machine Project (LA) and the Arts Center of the Capital Region (Troy, NY), and others. Misha is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Caitlin is part-time faculty in the Art and Design Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
http://misharabinovich.com
Tracey BENSON. Changing tides: Migration, Ecology and Deep time
I would like to present a paper on a recent project titled “Waters of the past” to explore some of the theoretical and practical contexts of that work. This project has emerged from a number of residencies in Iceland, the Faroes and Norway in 2016-17.
The objective of the project is to build a visual knowledge and language base from a range of media including DNA, photography, video and augmented reality. During my time in Norway in August-Oct 2017, I will be building my knowledge of the region, with a focus on the countryside around Oslo, Drammen and Hurum (where I have ancestral connections).
While in Iceland and the Faroes in 2016, I started to learn more about early language and the Runic symbols and alphabet. This interest is slightly disconnected from my main focus of water and water stories but has links to my interest in culture and storytelling. At SCANZ Mahia, I have expanded this work, collaborating with a Maori artist to create runes from found objects and then ‘offering’ them back to the sea.
My intention is to explore the iconography of the sea and natural environment as a juxtaposition to the runic symbols. For me, these symbols represent a culture and language lost as well as a ‘proxy’ for ancestral links to the old country. I see the reinvigoration of these symbols very powerful in regards to constructing a narrative about place, history and belonging as well as offering a link between culture and environment at an experiential level.
The paper will offer some rich examples from the project as well as putting forward some provocations for action.
Biography: Tracey Benson is a green geek/artist/researcher whose interests include connected communities, online engagement, sustainability, tech/art synergies, maps and open source software. Over many years, Tracey has been active in broad range of media arts communities: in 2007, she co-founded the Canberra chapter of dorkbot and a moderator on the internationally renowned new media list –empyre- from 2005-07. She is currently a Trustee and the Secretary/Treasurer for Intercreate – an organisation focused on the synergies between arts, science, technology and Indigenous knowledge for the purpose of exploring and responding to environmental challenges. Tracey is also a Board Director of Ethos GLobal Foundation. Her creative work has focused on the connections between landscape and identity. This has been realised through a number of umbrella projects including Big Banana Time Inc (1995-2000) – a parodic investigation of the landscape, tourism and consumerism and Fauxonomy (2007 – 2013). Fauxonomy uses source material of a factual and scientific nature, but by way of constructing a fictitious or personal narrative, the authenticity of the data is challenged. More recent creative explorations have utilised mobile and hand-held online technologies for the creation of virtual and augmented reality (AR) works. Interactive AR works have been produced in Dunedin, Auckland, Copenhagen, Canberra, Kochi and New Plymouth. The move to working with handheld devices has also coincided with an increased focus on working collaboratively with Indigenous groups and individuals to gain better understanding of the landscape we inhabit and to raise awareness of the environmental crisis humanity is facing. Her current major project Words for Water focuses on the humanitarian and environmental issues related to water. Tracey also utilises solar energy in her installation work, as an attempt to make electronic artwork ‘off the grid’. In 2001 she received a Research MA from Queensland University of Technology, focusing on souvenirs, nostalgia and personal identity. In 2010 Tracey was awarded a PhD at The Australian National University, which explores online communities and social networking tools. Recent publications include chapters in Mobile Media Practices, Presence and Politics and Locating Emerging Media. Tracey is a Professional Associate at the Institute of Applied Ecology at University of Canberra and is also undertaking postgraduate research on sustainability behaviour change.
Ludwig ZELLER, Martin RUMORI. The Institute of Sonic Epistemologies. Speculative Design and Sonic Fiction through Binaurally Mixed Environments
The Institute of Sonic Epistemologies is a site-specific, mixed environment installation that explores ways to convey a fictitious, ‘post-visual’ scenario: What if visual strategies lost their dominance in scientific data analysis against sonic techniques? What if blind people caught up with the non-blind in our information societies through their advantage in hearing? The installation stages a training class for statistical data analysis by means of sonification. Visitors are invited to enter and explore the space, however, the actual narrative is only accessible by listening to an augmented auditory layer provided by headphones. These are installed at different locations in the room, each of them allowing for a different spatial perspective combined with advancing dramaturgy. Binaural technology and custom acoustic measurements in the exhibition space are used in order to relate visual and auditory elements to each other while the augmented layer and the real space provide the same acoustic impression.
The lecture gives a short introduction to fictional story-telling in Speculative Design (Dunne/Raby 2013, Zeller 2016, Zeller 2017) by the means of material and audio-visual stagings and in consideration of binaural auditory environments (Rumori 2017). Subsequently, our approach departs from Holger Schulze’s (2013) and Pedro Vieira de Oliveira’s (2016) discussion of “Sonic Fiction” as coined by Kodwo Eshun (1998).
Biography. Ludwig Zeller explores the relationship between technologies and culture through a multitude of artistic and scientific methods. In his practice he blurs the supposedly clear, disciplinary borders between art and design. Ludwig graduated from the Design Interactions programme at the Royal College of Art London and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. As a docent at the Academy of Art and Design Basel (FHNW) he examines with his students the poetic dimensions of our data culture through audio-visual translations between analogue and digital domains. His personal research puts a special emphasis on the narrative qualities of fictional design artefacts and scenarios. Strategies for creating awareness and reflection of our status quo as well as the discussion of the relationship between society and technology are key points of his investigations. Ludwig has worked as a designer and artist since 2005 and joined the academic board of the Academy of Art and Design Basel in 2011. His work has been exhibited internationally at V2_ Rotterdam, FILE Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro, MU Eindhoven, Arnolfini Bristol, Barbican London, technarte Bilbao and written about in PAGE, De:Bug, Fast.Co Design, wemakemoneynotart, Beyond the Beyond and CAN.